In determining the total number of prospects for each team, we counted draft picks, signed or unsigned, and players on the respective reserve lists who have not cracked an NHL roster on a regular basis. I count a player as a top prospect if I believe he will play a regular role on an NHL team, either this season or in coming seasons.

The Panthers have the most blue-chippers coming down the pipeline, and Jonathan Huberdeau (third overall, 2011) leads a long list of players who will play, and well, at the NHL level. He is a leader, loaded with desire and talent, and has a knack for making big plays. Eric Gudbranson (third overall, 2010) is ready to make the jump from juniors to the NHL, and there’s also Quinton Howden (25th overall, 2010), and Nick Bjugstad (19th overall, 2010). All the Panthers need now is time to let their top prospects develop.Also on the radar: Jacob Markstrom (31st overall, 2008), Alex Petrovic (36th overall, 2010) and Rocco Grimaldi (33rd overall, 2011)

Comments (24 Comments)

Now we just have to have them DO something. Its kind of like winning the “pre-season superbowl” of statistics. We have the most potential, but potential and $.50 and you can make a phone call…IF you can find a payphone. Still, gotta be brighter on the future than we have been in the past 10 years: good folks in the pipeline, potentially a good/great coach in the making, a GM who struck gold once (could he do it again?), interesting if not active free-agency period. I’m still not quite pouring myself a glass of koolaid, but I’m at least lookin’ at the jug on the table!

We’ve heard this all before. This has been going on for the last 10+ years. They hyped Olesz. They hyped Horton, They hyped Bouwmeester. They hyped Weiss. Frolik? Stewart? Remember Svidki? Novoseltsev? Over and over, “experts” said the Panthers looked very strong for the future. They told us Panther prospects looked like some of the best in the league. Year after year the Panthers repeatedly got high draft picks. Then what happened? Half of them were busts. The other half were cut loose or traded away for garbage or nothing. I think these “ESPN insiders” might want to wait a couple of seasons before they make these bold predicitions. Their track record on the Panthers has been abysmal. Part of the problem is that Florida has been notorious for poorly developing young players and then inserting them too early or giving them too little ice time. Florida might actually have some great prospects, but if they don’t develop them properly they will be busts (or gone) as well. Hopefully they can finally break the vicious circle of ineptitude.

To the deluded perenial Rah Rahs, read and pay attention to the two above posts..
Proof is in results..The results that count are only those after january, and closer to April..
So until the past 11 years of poorly run and owned, and over promised and under delivered smoke and mirrors are history, nothing means any thing except long over due results..

Now your knocking ESPN? YO, your post on the recent article about the Panthers Foundation makes me sick. It’s one thing to knock the team and their track record but to take a shot at a foundation that raises money for pediatric cancer? You went way the over edge buddy and I now realize that your blogs are not meant to raise change in the Panthers organization, you are simply a pathetic loser. If you ever have a moment to break away from your world of negativity, why don’t you go visit a cancer ward or cough up a quarter million to help families who when faced with cancer, could care less about an idiot like you.

Red Baron, beyond your whining you actually make a great point. It’s not so much the picks the Panthers made, which is some of the problem, but it’s more the lack of proper development over the past 10 years. Some of our players have turned out to be pretty darn good – Horton, Weiss, Bouwmeester, etc. All of those guys are good NHL players. But our organization has never been committed to a winning farm system. Heck the Panthers haven’t even been committed to even icing a decent farm system b/c most of our prospects went right to the NHL and didn’t get time to develop properly.

ESPN usually hates us, so for them to give us the top prospect pool is pretty remarkable and a testament to what Tallon has managed to do in 2 short years. Our prospect pool is SICK. Lots of quality players. Whether they all pan out is not the way it works, but if 1/2 those guys mentioned turn out to be good NHL players, and maybe elite in the case of Huberdeau, Markstrom, Guds & even Grimaldi perhaps, we’re going to be very happy fans in the coming years. At least now we don’t have to rush these kids and we can let their talents develop at their own pace, which may be a big difference in the years past compared to now.

I personally like what the cats are doing this time around. The former players (Luongo, Vokoun, Horton, Bouwmeester) who leave is due to lack of scoring and a legitimate franchise player on the team. If the club is to rebuild, their focus has to be on the offense and go cheap on defensive players and goalies.

Red baron, i understand you’re not as optimistic as many others, but you start to sound really bitter. How do you think tallon should act if he wants to make Panthers a better team? NOT draft great prospects? NOT to sign the best available ufas? NOT try to get fans down to bankatlantic center? I know Panthers been down this road before, but they have to try to make this franschise better or else it will be sold and moved. If that’s what you want, i don’t understand why you keep reading and commenting this blog.

Simon; 11 years of the same pre season promises that are self serving and broken over and over again, could be the reason for any reasonable fan of this team to feel the way so many of us do.
Red is bitter and so are so many others, and you can not take away the reality that made us come to that conclusion.
This team must produce, and 11 years of smoke and mirrors, and the same rhetoric when they hire new coaches, and GMs will never mean a thing, until the Panthers produce substantial results..They must be close to 7 th place and peak after January, or if they do not we will once again be hearing the same Rah Rah posts by those type of fans, and that gets tired too..

Simon, if you will read my post again, you will notice I never mentioned Tallon’s name. I am referring to the nauseating ritual we go through every season where we have to hear how “great” the Panthers look on paper and how “amazing” Florida’s prospects look. My answer to these forecasters is, shut-up and let the team play some damn hockey to prove it. I am so freakin sick of these overly optimistic rosey forecasts. Every one of them has been wrong year after year. These so-called experts from around the league said the Panthers would do this and do that and in the end they did nothing. Every year they landed with a great big thud only to see all these “great” players be hauled off in one fire sale after another. I realize Tallon is still the new guy here, but I am not lavishing any praise on anyone until they have done something FOR FLORIDA that deserves praise here. I don’t give a crap about what Tallon did for Chicago or any other team. It does not buy us anything. Florida fans need to see less talk and more results. They are tired of the excuses. Tired of the heartache. Tired of the disappointment. Tired of the frustration. The humiliation. The ridicule. The melt-downs. The disasters. The broken promises. The lack of accountability and the total apathy. This club has been a sick club. It has a chronic culture of faiilure and is inherently comfortable with losing. Excellence does not exist. This has gone on for over a decade. The time for talk and bogus forecasts is over.

Gee, I must of had a darn good reason to change my blog name from #1frustrated to #1optomisticfloridapantherfan after the hiring of Mr. Tallon. Watch this team in the next season and you just might see for yourself.

I am guardedly optimistic because I do believe Tallon has an eye for an intangible thing called grit and desire.I do believe he realizes that former players were rushed and he has stated that he WILL NOT rush them into the NHL.So far he has done everything he has said and I will give him the benefit of the doubt and adopt a wait and see unbiased attitude.The crop of draft picks we have possess alot of talent and it was evident to myself and 2 others at the development camp last month.Timmons stood out last year and he didnt even appear average against Huberdeau,Howden,or Grimaldi.The pieces are in place and we have a tough coach at the AHL level.Huberdeau,Grimaldi,and Bjugsted are at least 2 yrs away and he will work in Howden gradually along with Gudbranson.I expect we will have a competitive team this year but no playoffs because of the goalie situation.Managment ie Yormark must keep their noses OUT of Tallons way.Tallon is well liked and respected by players and that shows something positive to me.

Normally I would agree with Red Baron, but I have a completely different take on this year. The difference is Bill Torrey. As I’ve stated before, when Alan Cohen and his cronies took control of this team they pushed Bill Torrey far into the background. They even gave him a gratuitous title of “Alternate Governor”. But, and I know both Red Baron and YO are going to hate this, when Cliff and Stu took over, they dusted off Mr. Torrey and put him front and center. I think this team will be a vast improvement over the past 10 years.

I’ve been sweating this club for 10 years myself and it’s very difficult to pry ourselves away from the warm embrace of failure after all the broken promises and wasted time. We gotta break free from that funk and start thinking positive again. The difference today is that we have a GM with an actual VISION of where this team needs to be.

Who in here doesn’t think this club has the pre-season potential with this current line-up to make the playoffs? Most of these new additions have the talent and experience to break out and make a name for themselves instead of being 2nd and 3rd complementary pieces to superstars on their former clubs. They’re gonna see more ice time here than anywhere else they’ll ever play and I think this crew is gonna make us forget that decade of disaster ever happened.

To me, Huberdeau, Guds, Howden, Markstrom, ect, are terrific additions and you’d love to have them, but they’re gratuities to flirt with on this current roster. Goc, Matthias, Howden or possibly even Huberdeau will take that last center spot. That’s a huge sigh of relief alone to know that we can be choosers this time around instead of settling for whoever’s left. Things are looking up and we’ve got barely any reason to be skeptical today as where in the past.

I continually hear a lot of negative rants and I feel a lot of us share some of this over the past 10+ years, but try to take some of the bitterness out of it.. It’s not the fact that your point about these ESPN insiders could be wrong or have the Panthers prospects over-hyped a bit, but it’s just too much negativity on post after post after post…

And we obviously don’t have to agree on the various changes the team has had, but I think it’s fair if you want to be negative about something, then state what it is you don’t like and what you feel they should do instead.. And don’t just blame Yormark for everything. Sure he’s probably a shady sales guy, but that’s pretty much Viner’s call to keep him here, whether most of us agree or not..

As far as the team and the changes Tallon and Santos have done, I think most agree it’s a refreshing change. So if you don’t agree with certain factors such as spending too much on Campbell, Jovo, etc–that’s fine, but state what you don’t like and what you feel they should’ve done different. I think it’s a whole lot better than basically hearing same old Panthers, yada, yada,yade… Use specifics to back up your negativity if you feel that way.

Slapshot your approach has good intentions, however uninformed. I do not mean that in a derogatory way at all.
I have posted over and over again and for many years what in my opinion is wrong with this team, so has Red and others. Nothing has changed but the names of the new players on and off the ice. In no way am I going to put forward the time and effort to explain the many rediculous errors of this team, for that matter it is in the results of the past 11 years..
So my fellow poster, I say the results will be self evident after January and late into the season..The rest of this Rah Rah and 11 year delusional posts by uninformed dreamer posters have meant nothing at all. The record stands a confirmed failure and broken promises and new names posted here every season of the let down Rah Rah fans.are legendary.
So now the few functional illiterates can wish me dead and other loser mentality statements and futile attacks on me.. It means nothing at all..I spend lots of money supporting this team, not only in sponsorship, and tickets, but other ways as well.
I would be very happy to see new owners with NHL experience save this franchise, I want the NHL in South Florida..I believe that since Wayne, the owners have been nothing else than amatuers in a professional world. Their choice of management is laughable, and in my opinion a betrayal of the NHL and the franchise..

Guess what YO, I agree with you, but please take it a step further. It was not only ineptitude of the ownership these past 10+ years, but it was the fact that they did not understand the basic principle of making money. For all their personal wealth, they couldn’t understand that to make money you must spend money. They put nothing in and received nothing. They took a full arena and turned it into an advertising campaign. And by the way, you don’t have to have owners with NHL experience, you just have to have owners that are committed to putting a quality product on the ice.

I personally agree with you 100%. I am pretty sure that 98% of the people who blog here agree with you as well. Unfortunately, we all have to deal with the other 2% who live on their own planet, which is buzzing around in their own universe.

May I make a recommendation? Just ignore those people. I refer to them as the “nay-sayers” (and don’t worry about them because as the team improves they will disappear from this blog page). Those bloggers postings are just rants and ravings. They use evidence the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. If the Panthers won the Stanley Cup in five games, they would still complain.

As the team improves they will either change their tune or disappear, and in the blink of an eye they will be quickly forgotten.

You sound like a great person, just like the rest of the 98% who post here , and I look forward to your future postings (unlike them you make sense).

Then I was a putz. I thought that you had some semblance of respect. I guess I got it wrong. ( Who bats 100% when a 330 average will get you into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Have a nice day!

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About the author

HARVEY FIALKOV, a tennis-playing sportswriter who grew up in Long Island following the dynastic Islanders, is the new Panthers beat writer for the Sun Sentinel and looking forward to writing about the best professional sports team in Broward County.